Never Trump should be Always Hillary

Posted on May 21, 2016 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

 

Nate Silver wrote an extensive mea culpa that ostensibly ignored those media industry resources that ESPN had available to study Trump success. Nate’s omitting the multi-modal effects of looking at Trump’s celebrity media reputation and Q-scores as well as assessing the stupidity of his  lizard-brained competitors made a conventional quantitative analysis less analytic and more complex.

The problem is not that Nate was being so pundit-like or that he failed in any way as he was in not appreciating the historical and multiple methodologies needed for an analysis. Sabremetrics and Moneyball notwithstanding, studying the John Miller-Barron political phenomenon is more like thinking all rhizomes are magic mushrooms.

Also Americans are idiots since they were able to elect Ronald Reagan among other fools in US history (see Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson, and George W. Bush[Nate could have made the same tRump mistakes with 2000 Florida]).

It’s not so much the scientific method as a unnatural method that’s needed when it comes to tehDonald. The real failure is thinking that pundit journalism and data journalism share common rules and measures. Because as the media industry itself has shown, the customer (rube) is always correct.

Cheer up Nate, you can hopefully predict accurately the success of Russian Olympic athletes now that they’ve claimed that they won’t cheat anymore. Or the real disaster when the House of Representatives selects Paul Ryan as the 45th POTUS. What’s now needed: “measures of oomph and importance” (Ziliak & McCloskey 2008)

Since Donald Trump effectively wrapped up the Republican nomination this month, I’ve seen a lot of critical self-assessments from empirically minded journalists — FiveThirtyEight included, twice over — about what they got wrong on Trump. This instinct to be accountable for one’s predictions is good since the conceit of “data journalism,” at least as I see it, is to apply the scientific method to the news. That means observing the world, formulating hypotheses about it, and making those hypotheses falsifiable. (Falsifiability is one of the big reasons we make predictions.1) When those hypotheses fail, you should re-evaluate the evidence before moving on to the next subject. The distinguishing feature of the scientific method is not that it always gets the answer right, but that it fails forward by learning from its mistakes…

1. Our early forecasts of Trump’s nomination chances weren’t based on a statistical model, which may have been most of the problem.

2. Trump’s nomination is just one event, and that makes it hard to judge the accuracy of a probabilistic forecast.

3. The historical evidence clearly suggested that Trump was an underdog, but the sample size probably wasn’t large enough to assign him quite so low a probability of winning.

4. Trump’s nomination is potentially a point in favor of “polls-only” as opposed to “fundamentals” models.

5. There’s a danger in hindsight bias, and in overcorrecting after an unexpected event such as Trump’s nomination…

So when the next Trump-like candidate comes along in 2020 or 2024, might the conventional wisdom overcompensate and overrate his chances? It’s possible Trump will change the Republican Party so much that GOP nominations won’t be the same again. But it might also be that he hasn’t shifted the underlying odds that much. Perhaps once in every 10 tries or so, a party finds a way to royally screw up a nomination process by picking a Trump, a George McGovern or a Barry Goldwater. It may avoid making the same mistake twice — the Republican Party’s immune system will be on high alert against future Trumps — only to create an opening for a candidate who finds a novel strategy that no one is prepared for.

Cases like these are why you should be wary about claims that journalists (data-driven or otherwise) ought to have known better. Very often, it’s hindsight bias, sometimes mixed with cherry-picking17 and — since a lot of people got Trump wrong — occasionally a pinch of hypocrisy.18

Still, it’s probably helpful to have a case like Trump in our collective memories. It’s a reminder that we live in an uncertain world and that both rigor and humility are needed when trying to make sense of it.

fivethirtyeight.com/…

bernclinton-11.pngAccording to the most recent YouGov poll, 61 percent of Sanders voters have an unfavorable view of Clinton, against just 38 percent with a favorable one. YouGov has been tracking these numbers for several months,1 and they’ve gradually gotten worse for Clinton

Continue reading →

Posted in 2016 Election, Bill Clinton, Celebrity, Democracy, DNC, Government, information Technology, Liberals, Media, Neoliberals, Non-partisans, Political Science, Politics, Presidential Elections, Presidents, Progressives, Society, Tea Party, Uncategorized, War, Women's Rights | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

The Coffee Shop – Lizards Playing Rock-Paper-Scissors

Posted on May 21, 2016 by Joy of Fishes

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

From Deep Look:

Male side-blotched lizards have more than one way to get the girl. Orange males are bullies. Yellows are sneaks. Blues team up with a buddy to protect their territories. Who wins? It depends – on a genetic game of roshambo.

How I wish I knew how to post a poll on this site!  Tell me in the comments, which style do you favor – Orange, Yellow, or Blue?

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The Coffee Shop – The Coca Cola carillon at Stone Mountain, GA

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Chuck Stanley

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

The Coca Cola company had a special carillon built especially for the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The instrument has a staggering 762 bells. However, the bells are not the usual “bell shape.” They are tubular bells, which to me is reminiscent of the theme music, Tubular Bells, Mike Oldfield composed for The Exorcist.

This is probably the largest and certainly the heaviest musical instrument in this country.  After the World’s Fair, Coca Cola donated the carillon to the state of Georgia. After all, Coke is a Georgia based company, having started there.  John Pemberton, a Confederate Colonel, was wounded in the civil war. Due to his wounds, he became addicted to morphine, and was looking for a medication to help him get off the morphine. Pemberton was the proprietor of Pemberton’s Eagle Drug and Chemical House, a drugstore in Columbus, Georgia. He came up with what he called at first, French Wine Coca. However strong prohibition laws were in place at the time, so he created a non-alcoholic version. He believed that carbonated soda was a healthful drink, so his first drinks were carbonated instead of alcoholic. On May 8, 1886, it was sold for the first time at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta, Georgia.  The first bottling of Coca-Cola occurred five years later, in 1891, at the Biedenharn Candy Company in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

I should note that I have had a drink of original Coca Cola at Biedenharn’s original plant in Vicksburg. It was made by the same machine used back then. They give you a tiny paper cup of the drink. It tastes like Coke, more or less, but is flatter and has almost no fizz compared to modern Coke.

Years ago, someone gave me a very rare Sample & Lake original Coke bottle from the Sample & Lake Bottling Company in Jackson, MS. It does not look anything like the curvy bottle that came later. It is a thick greenish glass with straight sides.  And it still has part of the original lead stopper inside. You read that right. The stopper was lead. When it was pulled, the lower part breaks off when the seal is broken, the bottom plug part falling into the bottle.

I am rather fond of that old bottle. Seems that Mr. Sample and Mr. Lake were only in business together for six months, and very few bottles bearing both names were made. When Sample went on alone after the partnership broke up, he made a lot of bottles, so while rare, they are not as rare as a Sample & Lake bottle.

Back to the Coca Cola carillon. Georgia and Coke officials had to decide on where to put the carillon so it could be enjoyed by as many people as possible. They also wanted it to be in a location conducive to peace and quiet, free of city and traffic noises. They settled on Stone Mountain State Park. Near Atlanta, visited by thousands of tourists, but still a charming and quiet place. There is a lake some distance from the Stone Mountain granite monolith with its excursion train circling the base.

The landscape architects placed the carillon on a spit of land projecting into the lake, so it can be seen and heard easily from almost anywhere around the lake. It is not only one of the world’s great musical instruments, it is also a beautiful sculpture standing 13 stories tall, totally unlike the usual bell tower we think of when thinking of a carillon.

The carillon has been played by Ms. Mabel Sharp since the instrument’s premier concert in 1974. There are frequent performances, and a schedule is posted. One can purchase recordings of her carillon concerts at the gift shop. Her best selling album is probably the one of Christmas carols.

Ms. Sharp plays daily. On her rare days off, the concerts are done electronically by songs she has pre-programmed. She says the secret of her unbroken record is that if she feels sick, she takes about five aspirin and goes to the console.

It is 380 feet from her console to the amplifying tower. They are connected by underground wiring. She points out that it is not only a complex instrument, it is a potentially dangerous one. The notes of the brass tubular “bells” are created when electric hammers strike them. However, in order to be heard a mile away, the soft chime of the bells must be amplified by a massive array of high fidelity speakers. As she likes to point out, “I am pushing more than 8,000 watts.”

All the kids with their boom box cars and trucks driving past my house should slink off in a thick cloud of fail.

Continue reading →

Posted in Georgia, Music, Sculpture | Tagged , , , , | 11 Comments

Word Cloud: UNDAUNTED

Posted on May 20, 2016 by wordcloud9

Word Cloud Resized

by NONA BLYTH CLOUD

It’s 1665, and you’re an Englishwoman married to a Dutchman, who dies suddenly, leaving you nothing but debts. You’re recruited as an ‘intelligence gatherer’ for King Charles II, using the code name “Astrea.” The Crown pays for your passage to Antwerp. Here you try to talk a disaffected Englishman, whose father was executed for participating in the regicide of Charles I, into turning double agent. But when the time comes for your return to England, there’s no response to pleas for payment of your fare, so in December 1666 you reluctantly borrow money to pay your own way. When you get home, the King continues to turn a deaf ear to all your requests for payment. By 1668, you’ve been thrown into debtor’s prison.

If you were like most 17th century women, after being left destitute in your late twenties, options would be limited – you’d probably barter your body, for your freedom if you were lucky, or for the food to keep you alive (imprisoned debtors were responsible for providing life’s necessities for themselves), if you were not.

But if you were Aphra Behn (1640–1689), you would get out. Because just two years after this impoverished widow was consigned to debtor’s prison, Aphra Behn had launched her writing career, which was to make her one of the most influential Restoration era playwrights, as well as a famous (and sometimes infamous) poet and novelist.

These lines from The Rover (1677) were probably inspired by the hard times of her past:

Pox of Poverty, it makes a Man a Slave,
makes Wit and Honour sneak, my Soul grow
lean and rusty for want of Credit.

Aphra_Behn_by_Peter_Lely

There’s a lot we don’t know about Aphra Behn: 1640 is likely the year of her birth, but there are at least three different theories about who her parents were, and it’s not even certain if Aphra was her original given name, or one she chose for herself. Behn was her husband’s last name — at least it’s a common spelling of his surname, and she could have been married to him, but all we have for certain are a name and a nationality.

An essay by an unidentified “One of the Fair Sex” found attached to the collection of The Histories And Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (1696) says that Aphra was the daughter of  Mr. and Mrs. John Johnson of  Canterbury. Johnson was a gentleman related to Francis, Lord Willoughby, who appointed him lieutenant general of Surinam, for which Willoughby was the royal patentee. Whether Aphra was the Johnson’s child, fostered by them, or in their employ, she did accompany the Johnsons and a boy, possibly her brother or in her charge, in 1663 on a voyage to the West Indies. John Johnson died on the way, while Aphra, Mrs. Johnson and the boy went on to live for several months in Surinam. Aphra Behn’s most famous novel, Oroonoko (1688), was based on her experiences there.

From the production of her first play, The Forc’d Marriage, in 1670, until her death, Aphra Behn earned her living as a writer, signing her work as a woman. Her plays were regarded as “scandalous” because they were written by a female.

Design ala Restoration bookbinder Samuel Mearne

In her poetry, Behn boldly tackled the sexual “double  standard” and same-sex love. She often wrote poems in the voice of a  character — in this case, a cynical seducer of women:

The Libertine

A thousand martyrs I have made,
All sacrificed to my desire;
A thousand beauties have betrayed,Paul-Emile Becat - Les bijoux indiscrets
That languish in resistless fire.
The untamed heart to hand I brought,
And fixed the wild and wandering thought.

I never vowed nor sighed in vain
But both, though false, were well received.
The fair are pleased to give us pain,
And what they wish is soon believed.
And though I talked of wounds and smart,
Love’s pleasures only touched my heart.

Alone the glory and the spoil
I always laughing bore away;
The triumphs, without pain or toil,
without the hell, the heav’n of joy.
And while I thus at random rove
Despise the fools that whine for love.

Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry, Theatre, Word Cloud | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Coffee Shop – “Make CANADA Even Greater!”

Posted on May 19, 2016 by wordcloud9

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

canada_ad campaign

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This is not the first election year that some Americans have vowed to leave the country if a certain Presidential Candidate should win, but it may be the first time that the Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) website crashed because of the surge in inquiries from the U.S.

Canadians are taking advantage of the increasing number of worried Americans. A website for Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, called “Cape Breton if Donald Trump Wins,” popped up in recent weeks and has attracted significant attention. The site even has information on immigration and housing.

Now, the Critical Mass advertising agency, part of the advertising giant Omnicom, has launched its own campaign to capture American attention.

The New York Times covered their new advertising launch, which encourages Trump haters to escape to Canada to work for their agency. The new site “MoveToCanadaEh.com”  exhorts agency pros to “Make Canada Even Greater” by applying to work at Critical Mass Calgary and/or Toronto.

CEO Dianne Wilkins told Sydney Ember of the Times, “We’re in a unique place to comment on and participate in this public half-comedy, half-serious discussion that’s going on out there.”

“Make Canada Even Greater,” a nod to Trump’s infamous campaign slogan,  is accompanied by Symbols of Canada  — a moose, maple syrup, the Canadian flag, a hockey player in a jersey with a maple leaf. There’s even a section on “what to expect from your new home”  with slogans like “Canada is big,” and “High poutine diets” (Poutine is a Canadian delicacy combining french fries, gravy and cheese curds.)

Critical Mass says that their website traffic has increased page views on its Toronto careers site by 2,310 percent and on its Calgary careers site by 244 percent. Traffic to the agency’s website has increased 50 percent since the campaign launch.

 

Posted in Canada, Politics, Presidential Elections, United States | Tagged , , | 12 Comments

Hillary must resist the temptation to Triangulate

Posted on May 19, 2016 by ann li-summers

By ann summers

enten-generaldislike-2_1_

More surprising is that there is a literature going back to 2010 urging that the Democratic party move past the linear model of political triangulation as a strategic messaging option.

There are serious reasons why Hillary’s triangulating her WV coal gaffe was a bad move since she then had to bring her husband forward to counter the criticism which ultimately may prove more costly in the long run. The recent NV delegate fight demonstrates that this contentiousness is not serving the party well.

Similarly Katrina Vandenheuvel’s recent op-ed in WaPo expresses the same progressive concerns and prescribes a strategy based as many including that noted dope-smoking loser, David Brooks stated recently, that HRC should not move to the center in the General Election.

More importantly the downticket races should not be ignored as they were by the triangulators of 2010 and 2014. Often PBO has been hamstrung by the need to default to those remaining centrist forces in the DNC as they triangulated away from the White House to fight the ‘baggers.

The sox/rux battles, as amusing and sometimes baffling they are in disinformation (if were there thrown chairs in NV, why isn’t there a cellphone video) are symptomatic of the kinds of triangulating, reactionary, and polarizing silliness all too frequently found online – some intentional, some quite ignorantly unidimensional. And then there’s the politically naive zealotry of new voters and using social media to troll threats:

RS: So you and your boyfriend were watching this all unfold online from your home in another state?

This is our first primary. Just because of my age, the first thing we’ve gotten to participate in was a prime presidential primary, and so the emotions [ran high]. I’ve got a group of friends, we all like to watch the debates together. We’ve all just graduated recently, so this is our first primary to be a part of. We get emotional about this stuff…. People on Twitter have told me that I hate women, that I’m a white supremacist — have called me all sorts of things. You know, I supported Hillary at the very beginning of this primary season before I found out who Bernie Sanders was. And, like I said, I’m just one person. I don’t have any affiliation with anybody.

But we live in an age of perfect storms where libertarians think that they can function without a social contract in a pluralist democracy and “independent” voters are simply indecisive because of a two-party duopoly at the district level. As binary as choices may present themselves, dimensions like race and class are far more nuanced in 2016.

Even HRC’s sobriquet, “…a progressive who gets things done.”, semantically presumes as triangulation, that progressives, because of some putative idealism, don’t get things done.

Such triangulation strategies cost the party the 2000 and 2004 elections and at the global level even more people died who didn’t have to as a result of meaningless GOP wars.

History should not have to repeat that error in 2016 by strategically triangulating on a negative favorability margin.

Getting things done and being progressive are not mutually exclusive and the result isn’t a third way because there is no “reasonable center” no matter how one triangulates it.

The theory that Clinton would benefit by tacking to the center also misinterprets the lessons of the primaries and misreads what independent voters want. Sanders mounted a strong primary challenge by rejecting the bipartisan consensus on matters such as trade policy, an issue that Trump has effectively exploited as well. These deviations from the centrist orthodoxy do not merely appeal to voters on the left. They are part of why Sanders polls better than Clinton among independents and in hypothetical matchups against Trump.

ACCORDINGLY, IF CLINTON SEEKS TO BOOST HER MODERATE APPEAL BY FURTHER DISTANCING HERSELF FROM SANDERS’S AGENDA, SHE RISKS CEDING IMPORTANT GROUND TO TRUMP IN THE GENERAL ELECTION…

At the presidential level, the strategic calculus should be straightforward. Democrats have demographics on their side due largely to their massive advantage with minorities and women, who make up a growing share of the electorate. But as progressive activist and pundit Van Jones has argued, Trump “can’t be beaten by assuming that demographics are going to save us.” Instead, Clinton’s fate will depend on her ability to ensure that large numbers of Democratic voters vote. For that reason, her top priority should be maximizing turnout among the constituencies that are most likely to support her over Trump, which means embracing a more progressive agenda.

MEANWHILE, MOBILIZING THE BASE WILL BE EVEN MORE CRITICAL IN DOWN-BALLOT RACES, ESPECIALLY IN SWING STATES AND HOUSE DISTRICTS WHERE DEMOGRAPHICS ARE LESS OF A FACTOR.

swing-states-20161_1_.jpg
SWING STATES 2016

 

triangulation

Hillary.triangulation.png

 

The act of a political candidate presenting his or her views as being above and between the left and right sides of the political spectrum. It’s sometimes called the “third way.”

The term was first used by political consultant Dick Morris while working on the re-election campaign of President Clinton in 1996. Morris urged Clinton to adopt a set of policies that were different from the traditional policies of the Democratic Party in order to co-opt the opposition.

Posted in 2016 Election, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Campaign Finance, Congress, Conservatives, Democracy, DNC, Fascists/Corporatists, Free Speech, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, History, Homosexual Rights, Immigrants, Jimmy Carter, Liberals, Libertarians, Media, Nazis/Nazism, Neoconservatives, Neoliberals, Non-partisans, Political Science, Politics, Presidential Elections, Progressives, Racism, Reproductive Rights, RNC, Ronald Reagan, Society, State Government, States, Tea Party, Trolls, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

The Coffee Shop – Coyote and Crow

Posted on May 18, 2016 by Joy of Fishes

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

From Elaine McMillion Sheldon:  “Coyote and Crow journey out for a day of busking in NYC.”

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The Coffee Shop – The Sweetest Gift

Posted on May 17, 2016 by Joy of Fishes

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

40 years ago, give or take, Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris teamed up to sing “The Sweetest Gift”:

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Posted in Country Music, Short Video, Tennessee | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

The Coffee Shop – Shenandoah – Woodbridge’s choir is singing in a cave Výpustek

Posted on May 16, 2016 by Joy of Fishes

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

Just beautiful:

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This is an open thread. There are several hosts, each host being responsible for picking a “theme of the day” and starting the discussion. However, there is no hard and fast rule about staying on topic, especially if you have a personal story burning a hole in your pocket trying to escape.
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The Coffee Shop – Please Touch the Art

Posted on May 15, 2016 by Joy of Fishes

The Coffee Shop is an open thread-style discussion forum for human interest news of the day.

From Cantor Fine Art:

One day a blind man discovered a screw painting by Andrew Myers with his hands. The blind man found as much enjoyment out of the tactile elements of the work as any sighted person ever has by just looking at them. Andrew considers this moment as one of the most inspiring of his career. Which led us to a question: Why is touching artwork so taboo?  Continue reading on Vimeo

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Posted in Art, Short Video | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment